


White Noise

by revise_leviathan



Series: that one shameless g-era ot3 au [3]
Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Established Relationship, Feeding, G era, Hypnosis, Non-Sexual Bondage, Other, but very lowkey, hey remember how psyqualia had weird hypnotic suggestion undertones in season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 21:44:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17670668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revise_leviathan/pseuds/revise_leviathan
Summary: It's the kind of evening where Ren would really like to just faceplant into his couch pillows, but he can't. Aichi and Kai are coming back from overseas again, so he needs to get ready - it's the most important thing he can think of right now. And possibly the only thing he can think of right now. That's normal, right?Alternately: Aichi reminds Ren of that one weird element of Psyqualia everyone forgot about after season 1. To a certain value of the word "reminds".





	White Noise

**Author's Note:**

> so i actually wrote this at the end of november but got busy and then forgot about it until i was shitposting about this au earlier today, but i'm pretty sure it still falls into the "written at absurd hours of the morning" qualifier of the other fics in this au
> 
> anyway i was going to write that sequel i joked about to chef's line but i kept getting sidetracked by the general lack of ren-being-anything-but-a-dom questionable content in this fandom and then this happened instead, though it came out way more chill than i was expecting when i started writing it let me tell you
> 
> also i kind of placed it quite early in the relationship, when they've established rules of a sort but are still working out what everyone's into when it comes to relationshippy things

It’s five in the afternoon, and Ren only wishes he could have just woken up. It’s been his most boring day in recent memory, full of meetings and tiresome bureaucratic minutiae that he’d leave to Tetsu in an ideal world where every business partner didn’t insist on the both of them being present, and he’d really like to just sink into the squishy couch cushions he threw himself onto as soon as he got home. It’d be a merciful relief after that level of mind-numbing networking, but he’s expecting visitors later, and it’s only that which gives him the necessary boot to his minimal self-control to stay awake.

With a drawn-out sigh, he rolls over onto his back and fishes around in his coat’s inner pocket for his deck, setting the box aside on the coffee table so he can start to fan out the cards in his hand. He’s made one or two changes recently, ones that he hasn’t had as much opportunity to test as he’d like, and he’s still mulling on that a little as he passes the G units and pauses at the start of the deck proper. The sight of Blaster Dark, regardless of form, has a way of setting him at ease, and he feels his shoulders sink back a little as the familiar voices of his units calm him, the connection that’s ever-present and waiting for him to lean into it. It’s as much part of Psyqualia as it ever was, but there’s a passivity to it nowadays, now that he’s relaxed himself around the ability after years of separation from his bad choices with it. He’s fairly sure it’s the same for Aichi now as well, and apparently constant enough to be recognised by their enemies in some way.

Images and voices speak into his head, and his expression softens into a smile as his head tilts back and he closes his eyes. It’s like a light touch, a brush against his mind that lifts his other thoughts for the moment, and he finds himself sitting up before too much longer, setting his deck aside with Blaster Dark Diablo just shy of place enough to be seen, because that’s important, isn’t it? It certainly feels like it, and Ren tends to run on instinct more than anything else.

Leaving the cards for the moment, he drifts across to his bedroom, not noting the time but with an awareness that he should be getting ready nonetheless. Kai’s flight must have already come in, and he knows Aichi was planning to come straight back here after they met. Kai’s about as polite a driver as he is polite about anything else, and he has a feeling it’s going to make things quicker than he should expect. So he pushes the smooth wooden door open and wanders into the familiar space, carved wood panelling contrasting with beautiful painted patterns on the walls almost like a twilight sky, with the messy bed and side table and drawers reflected in the wall-length mirror that fronts the closet to one side. He looks exactly like someone who came home from work and fell onto the couch immediately, and he frowns slightly as his fingers lace through his hair, most of the rest of the room escaping his focus as he moves closer to the mirror.

When he drifts back out of the room again, his hair is in as neat a plait as one can get the amount of hair he has into, and the sweater he’s wearing is just about ready to fall off his shoulders in that way some of his cutesier clothing tends to. It’s over his hands and almost down to his knees as well, and as he tilts his head down to watch the movement of a bracelet on his bare ankle as he walks, he wonders briefly if he’s forgotten something.

It’s fine, he decides a moment later. It looks nice that way.

Sweeping into the kitchen presents a bigger issue, that being how little time he has left and how unlikely Kai is to be satisfied with food not prepared to his exacting standards. But it’s okay, anyway, because he planned for that part. The details of how slip his mind initially, but it puts itself together again as soon as he opens the fridge. Everything’s waiting there, so since he started this early, it’s probably so he knew he’d have time to get ready. Right? Right. It sounds right.

Ren’s not completely sure how much time passes while he’s in the kitchen, but he’s confident it’s not enough that he needs to rush any. Dessert comes first, because it’s more complicated – and he’ll admit he cheated his way around Kai’s food perfectionism for the main meal this time by just planning sukiyaki. As long as the ingredients are good quality, which is something Ren would never have a problem with arranging, he shouldn’t have a problem with getting to cook himself at the table. The main focus, then, is the shortcake slowly coming together over the course of however long it’s been. The only time he really acknowledges is time taken to cook, so there was definitely at least an hour gone in there somewhere, and something seems slightly off about that, doesn’t it? That’s longer than he thought he had. But it was the plan all along, right, inasmuch as he ever plans for anything, so he shrugs the thought off and carries on preparing like it was never there in the first place.

He’s equally unsure how long has passed by the time he’s finished, cake waiting neatly in the fridge with sliced ingredients a few shelves below as he kneels next to the low table he pulls out for traditional meals. Everything that’s not going to suffer for being out at room temperature is ready on the table, and he rearranges himself on his cushion somewhat restlessly before deciding he’s done and standing up. He needs…something else to do, something to occupy himself, and his attention drifts again until he finds himself in front of his dresser, then knelt down by the table again, a long ribbon he sometimes uses to put up his hair for special occasions being twisted and toyed with between his fingers.

Did he look anywhere else between those two points? It’s probably not important, if he can’t remember. He never pays much mind to uninteresting things, and he turns his thoughts to the more interesting prospect of seeing Aichi and Kai in person after another of their lengthy absences as his focus starts to slip again. The ribbon is fiddled through his fingers, up to his wrists, around his wrists, braided up his arms to his elbows. It’s a little bit annoying to do with just his teeth, but there’s something satisfying about it, even when the criss-crossing ribbons are folded over each other at bound elbows and he stops, focus tentatively touching on the idea that _something is off here_ , even as the rest of his mind is at a loss as to how much more he can do without his hands available.

“Let me get that for you, Ren-san.”

A gentle voice sounds somewhere in the back of his head and yet in his ear at the same time as a delicate pair of hands reach over his shoulders to tie the ribbons once and twice into a bow, and Ren’s entire focus snaps back to him with it like having water poured over his head. He can hear Kai grumping around the kitchen already though he never heard the door open, can feel Aichi leaning over him, just by his face with a light smile – and feel the sudden wave of tiredness catching up with him from what he’s spent the last two hours doing, and the tightness of ribbon against his forearms. He stares for a good five seconds longer before a soft laugh escapes him, resigned yet appreciative as if of someone recognising the excellence of the trap they just walked into, and he rather deliberately flops back towards Aichi to make him have to take the sudden weight.

“Oh, that’s just _rude_ , Aichi-kun, I was even going to let Kai cook…”

Aichi catches his weight with a somewhat sheepish smile while Kai gives an unimpressed huff from the kitchen. “You mean you were going to have nothing prepared when we got here except the ingredients, so I’d cook because it was there and you hadn’t done anything.”

Ren lifts his ribbon-bound arms in an unapologetic shrug. “It’s the same thing, right? You always take over the kitchen if I let you.”

He looks like he’s about to start untying the ribbons with his teeth – or make a spirited attempt, at least – when Aichi catches his hands with both hands and settles them back into his lap.

“Sorry. You said I could surprise you however I wanted…” Aichi really does sound like he’s uncertain how Ren’s taking it, so Ren flops himself around, leaning his chin on Aichi’s chest with a catlike smile.

“Well, you did, didn’t you? I definitely wasn’t expecting that…though I don’t know that this was such good timing if we’re having dinner now…”

He raises his arms again and glances over to where Kai is already pulling things out of the fridge and critically inspecting them before setting them aside. Kai’s only response is a raise of the brow before he turns his attention to Aichi. “You could’ve tried this earlier, he’s actually paid attention to the cutting long enough to make everything the same size.”

“Hey—” Ren slips to one side as if he’s about to go huff over to Kai in faux offense, but as soon as he does, Aichi’s fingers run down his plait as gently as anything and Ren stops at exactly the moment they catch on the ornamental clip holding the end together. The hand on the braid guides him back around with no pulling or pressure, just a calm trace of fingers, and Ren swears he’s going to disown his own nerves if he shudders at that subtle exertion of power before they’ve even started dinner.

He settles, for now, for pouting mightily at Kai over Aichi’s shoulder while Aichi replies, rubbing his hands through the back of his hair awkwardly. “Well, I’ve never done it before myself, I only had it done to me…so I wasn’t sure it would work. Besides, it was a nice thought for Ren-san to make something we could all have together like sukiyaki, right?”

Something about the quiet innocence of that statement makes Kai let out a sigh that’s not doing a very good job of being exasperated more than fond, and he starts to bring the plates of meat and vegetables over to the table, a small bowl with an egg in it balanced a little precariously on the edge of one. His manner with this sort of thing is always like a professional, laying out the dishes within ideal reach before heating the stove, oiling the heavy iron pan, and starting to meticulously arrange each ingredient. It’s one of those things that’s expected and familiar, yet always somehow impressive despite that, and Aichi and Ren just watch him work until the second ingredient is laid and Ren decides to start trying to wiggle his arms out of the ribbons instead.

It’s not a very fruitful exercise, and Aichi gives the smile of someone who’s trying to be polite and honest about something but still feels kind of bad saying it. “You’re always really attentive about that sort of thing, aren’t you, Ren-san? I think you’re the most experienced with the three of us about things like playing with ribbons…”

Kai, without glancing up from his cooking, provides the less polite translation of that. “We don’t spend as much time thinking about it as you do, so we might as well let you do it to yourself.”

That gets a disbelieving hum out of Ren, as he leans over to rest on Aichi’s shoulder. “At least I make it _interesting_ , though, I don’t make you sit around and watch me cook dinner…”

“You would if you thought it would get you—”  
“—Kai-kun…”

Aichi raises his hands placatingly and Kai lets out a breath at the same moment Ren pokes his tongue out at him from across the table.

It takes a little while for the pan to heat up enough to cook the starting ingredients, but eventually, they settle back around the sizzling hotpot. Employing teeth against the double knot in the ribbon has been about as useful to Ren as just trying to squirm out of them was, so he’s momentarily stopped his fidgeting in favour of waiting for dinner like a normal person, because he really is hungry and tired and in the end, Kai’s still technically the one cooking it. Aichi, as always, is entirely content to wait, but he seems pretty content about something else too, which Ren can’t entirely put his finger on until the first cooked food starts coming out of the pot and Aichi carefully wraps some of the meat and vegetables together with his chopsticks and holds it out towards Ren’s face.

“You can try it first, Ren-san.”

Ren very deliberately meets Aichi’s gaze before leaning forward and opening his mouth, maintaining eye contact as he slides the food back into his mouth with a little bit more teeth and tongue than is entirely necessary. It makes Aichi shift just a little in his seat, and right now, that’s a nice little victory, though the bigger one is making Kai turn his head away completely in a questionable attempt to pretend he’s not turning pink.

“You know, if you wanted to feed me, you could have just asked,” Ren says, amusement dancing around his tone as Kai slowly turns his head back and Ren leans over towards him this time, mouth tilted up expectantly. “Where’s the fun in getting into my head if you don’t even get to watch me follow your suggestions, anyway?”

There’s something almost pouty about that admonishment, but he breaks it off for a moment as Kai offers a perfectly-proportioned combination of the sukiyaki in his direction like someone offering food out to a shark, and he has to open his mouth for that instead.

Kai’s also the one who gets to the answer first, decidedly on the side of dry cynicism. “Because if you’re already tired when we get here then we can all get one normal night of sleep out of this.”

Aichi’s politely hidden smile says he doesn’t entirely disagree with that, but he waves a hand with a laugh that walks the border of awkward. “I don’t really mind not seeing it…but I still got to see the work we did at the end, too. If I inspired you to do something you liked, I think it was worth doing it that way.”

There’s a beat of pause after that, Ren hesitating with his teeth still on Kai’s chopsticks, before he drags the food back and tilts his head huffily to one side, still halfway through eating. “You know I hate doing work, isn’t that kind of trite, and what were the ribbons even for if you wanted a normal night of sleep…”

And yet he’d definitely felt _satisfied_ at the end of it all, so who knows whether that was him or a side-effect of the Psyqualia contact that Aichi had gotten into his head with or something completely different. It’s enough that he almost misses Kai’s turn of the head towards Aichi as if he’d like an answer to that question himself, and the way Aichi hastily busies himself with his food at that precise moment.

Letting himself drop backwards onto his cushions, he shakes his head at the roof. “Anyway, it’s fine if you don’t do it again, since doing it that way is just boring.”

He puffs his cheeks out petulantly at the end of that as if to accentuate his point, but really, it’s just a testament to how much he doesn’t want to admit what it had actually felt like.

The unique and yet both identically disbelieving sighs of laughter that come from both sides of him tell him he didn’t really need to, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> normal sleep was probably had at the end of all this but i like to think ren also made sure that was the only normal sleep they had for this entire visit


End file.
